Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to image display apparatus.
Description of the Related Art
There has been proposed a method for displaying a document which is digitalized by using an information processing apparatus such as a mobile terminal or a tablet as image data. However, the entire image data (page image) for a page is displayed on such an apparatus provided with a small display screen, resulting in deterioration in visibility. Accordingly, for example, there has been proposed a display method for analyzing a layout of a page image upon enlargement thereof, recognizing a character object contained in the page image, and displaying the character object wrapped on a character-by-character basis according to the display area on a display screen. Japanese Patent No. 4094512 discloses a display apparatus that displays either a reduced image reduced to enable the entire sentence to be displayed on a display area or a wrapped image obtained by wrapping the character object on a character-by-character basis by the pressing of a button displayed on the display area by a user. The display apparatus also simultaneously displays a reduced image and a wrapped image on a display area without performing display image switching.
According to the method, even when the character object is wrapped and displayed as a result of enlargement of the character object, characters in the character object can be read if a display image is scrolled only in one direction (i.e., vertical direction or horizontal direction). Furthermore, characters contained in the character object can be read while viewing the entire document from above by switching two display images or by simultaneously displaying two display images on a display area through an explicit user's instruction. Japanese Patent No. 4094512 also discloses a method for sequentially displaying each area in a document image on a screen with a 1:1 magnification by two-dimensionally scrolling the screen in accordance with the reading order of the document image by a one-dimensional operation (an operation via a right arrow key).
Furthermore, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2010-504588 discloses a method for enlargedly displaying an area of interest on a page while being superimposed on page information by selecting an object present within the area of interest by a user upon displaying page information of which the page layout structure is defined. In this manner, a user can easily view a partial area of interest in a page with increased visibility.
However, the following phenomenon arises when the user specifies an area of interest which is an area desired to be displayed by scrolling in any direction through a swipe operation and by an enlargement/reduction operation through a pinch-out/pinch-in operation so as to read the specified page displayed on a screen. Specifically, there may exist a logo for a company, a design element, and the like, which do not change between pages, in any page, and it is often the case that these are in-page layout elements (hereinafter referred to as “decorative objects”) which are of no interest to the user and are the portions which the user does not want to read. In order to view a content that the user wants to read with a desired size readily readable for the user, the user himself needs to manually adjust the size and position of an image displayed on a screen each time the page is switched.
As disclosed in Japanese Patent No. 4094512, the following phenomenon arises when the screen is two-dimensionally scrolled in accordance with the reading order of the document image by a one-dimensional operation (an operation via a right arrow key). Specifically, when the areas in the document image are read in sequence via a key operation, the layout element which does not change between pages or is unnecessary to be read is also inevitably displayed on the screen. Thus, the user needs to read the layout element which is unnecessary to be read each time the page is switched.
Furthermore, when it is desired that the original page image is enlargedly displayed on an image display apparatus due to poor visibility caused by small characters or the like, the entire image may undesirably displayed small in size because the entire image is displayed with a decorative object included therein. The entire image is displayed small in size more than necessity each time the page is switched, so that the user undesirably needs to enlarge the image to a convenient size for the user and then adjust the position of the enlarged image for each page so as to read document.